Fund claims Sky investors could lose out in Disney-Fox deal

A hedge fund with a small stake in Sky has complained that Walt Disney’s takeover of 21st Century Fox could cost minority shareholders in the UK satellite broadcaster a hefty premium unless the regulator intervenes.

War Stories over Board Games

Polygon founder Reade Griffith explains how his experience fighting in the First Gulf War prepared him for the rigors of maneuvering global financial markets. Hint: War makes financial crisis a lot more managable by comparison.

Polygon’s Griffith Sees Opportunities in Spanish Real Estate

Weekly Brief: Hedge Funds

Polygon Global Partners is seeing opportunities in Spain amid its economic recovery as well as in Europe’s banking sector, according to Reade Griffith, who manages the London-based firm’s European equity strategy.

Griffith was interviewed by Melissa Karsh on June 26 and Aug. 14. His comments have been edited and condensed for clarity.

US activists make their mark in Europe

When Dan Loeb announced his largest ever stake in Switzerland-based Nestlé this summer, writes Lindsay Fortado, the move was the latest sign of the interest taken in Europe by activist shareholders from the US. Mr Loeb has been busy this year having also acquired stakes in UniCredit, the Italian lender, and German utility Eon. He was not alone. Elsewhere, Keith Meister’s Corvex Management joined with 40 North to take a 7.2 per cent stake in Clariant, the Swiss chemicals group, in the hope of scuppering its $20bn merger with US rival Huntsman.

They follow San Francisco-based ValueAct, which built a 10.8 per cent stake in Rolls-Royce beginning in 2015, and Elliott, Paul Singer’s hedge fund, which has been active in Europe for decades but has been ramping up activity. “As markets rise, people are starting to look for opportunities,” said Reade Griffith, the London-based chief investment officer of hedge fund Polygon’s European event-driven strategy, which sometimes takes a behind-the-scenes activist approach.

Time up on Trump trade, hedge funds look abroad

Hedge Fund Activists See More Opportunities in European Companies

Activist hedge fund Third Point LLC’s $3.5 billion stake in Nestlé threatens to make life awkward for the world’s largest packaged-food company. Several funds in Europe’s nascent market for shareholder activism are already creating a nuisance for the region’s companies for much less money.

A number of managers have recently made trades in which they’ve snapped-up shares in a European company controlled by a larger owner—often one trying to buy up the remaining shares of that company.

Hedge Fund Resurrection

The past few years have been tough on most hedge fund managers, but not on Reade Griffith.

Sitting in a meeting room of the London offices of his Tetragon Financial, Griffith is charged up. He says he can’t wait to get up every morning at 6 a.m. and scour the news for European stock bargains in the post-Brexit environment. “You’ve got to be on top of it. You’ve got to be here close to it. You can’t do this from New York,” says he. “I am excited.”